Boy (8) survives attack by cougar: “I tried to stab him in the eye”

An 8-year-old boy from Bailey, Colorado, experienced the fright of his life two weeks ago when a cougar suddenly attacked him in his yard. In the meantime, the boy is improving. “No, I never thought I’d fight a cougar,” he now testifies. “But I knew that one day I might see one because we just live here.” The cougar was found and euthanized.

Pike Carlson was playing with his brother in the garden on August 21 when he wanted to have a chat with a neighbor at some point. Unsuspectingly, the child walked down the hill when he suddenly saw the cougar on a stone next to him. And then the attack. “He jumped on me. And then we rolled down the mountain together and tried to push me under a tree.”

Scream

“I tried to hit and grab what I could,” the boy says. “I grabbed a stick and tried to stab it in his eye. But then the stick broke off.” While little Pike was struggling with the animal, his brother Gage rushed for their dad Ron.

When he arrived not much later, he saw his son lying pinned under the cougar, his head in his mouth. Eventually, Ron managed to chase the animal away – by shouting. “It was something between yelling and crying,” he says. It helped, and the cougar fled.

Surgery

“His face was open on one side,” the dad explains. “He was completely covered with blood.” Pike got more than 60 stitches in his face and had to undergo surgery to secure his eyeball. Probably another operation will follow to restore part of his eyelid.

The cougar in question was a young male, Colorado Parks & Wildlife said in a press release. The animal was euthanized along with another male cougar after they were found together in the carcass of a goat that had killed the animals just before. Hair samples from Pike and his father could be matched with tissue samples on the cougar.

Despite the experience, the 8-year-old Pike remains calm and positive. He does have a warning: “If someone ever wanted to fight with a cougar, don’t do that. They cheat. They scratch and bite. And they are faster.”

Boy (8) survives attack by cougar: “I tried to stab him in the eye”
A cougar, illustration image.

Source
NBC News, CNN
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